You have to eat!! Why not make it exciting? Whether you are across the globe or in your very own kitchen, there is always a way to make food fantastical.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Color Themed Potlucks: Red

Round two of our color themed potluck, we decided on red. For those of you wondering how we decide on the color, we thought that starting with easier colors and working up to the harder ones would be the best method. Then, during our meal, we throw around some ideas for the next lunch’s color, put the top ones on paper, and draw out of a hat.

Since I am still longing for New Orleans and it’s food, I opted to make red beans and rice. Just to keep with the theme, I used Thai red rice. I bought slab of pork shoulder from our favorite Chinese market, tossed together some of Emeril’s Essence and smacked it on that meat. I put it in the slow cooker with some onions, bell peppers, garlic, and celery. I waited to put the kidney beans in with the mixture until the morning because I didn’t want them to get dried out. The dish turned out pretty good, but I definitely have to “kick it up a notch” if I’m going to get anywhere close to making it taste authentic.

The other highlights from this meal were the red peppers stuffed with quinoa, chopped almonds, corn, cilantro, and lime; the tuna-parsley stuffed tomatoes; and the red velvet cheesecake. Some of the other wonderful red elements were a caprese salad, strawberries, cherries, watermelon, another red bean dish, frozen pizza (it’s not delivery, it’s Digiorno! and always really tasty), red pepper-tomato-cucumber-parsley salad, and I put some of the pork out with some cranberry sauce. Even though we had a lot of food, I feel like there is still so much more we can do with red; pasta with tomato sauce, raspberry desserts, radicchio. What do you think? I think we will have to revisit the red lunch…